No. 13 Mississippi State University won their 22nd come-from-behind victory of the season on Tuesday night against the Troy University Trojans.
After falling to an 8-3 deficit to the Trojans (30-22, 15-12 Sun Belt), the Bulldogs (34-19, 17-10 SEC) scored seven unanswered runs to take a 10-8 victory into their weekend series against No. 6 LSU.
Sophomore Jake Mangum hit in the winning run to give MSU a 9-8 lead in the bottom of the eighth inning.
“That’s what the 22nd come-from-behind win, some teams in college don’t have that many wins total,” Mangum said after the game. “We fight, lots a grind type team and it is a lot of fun to play for.”
Mangum is back healthy after playing through a hand injury the last couple weeks. He also moved in the batting order. The Pearl, Mississippi, native has leadoff all season long, but head coach Andy Cannizaro decided to move Mangum to the three hole in the lineup behind Brent Rooker.
Cannizaro said he moved Mangum behind Rooker in the lineup because of the amount of teams that pitch around Rooker. With the season Rooker is having, most teams are pitching around the hitter and issuing him walks. Cannizaro wants to force those teams that walk Rooker to then have to face another great hitter in Mangum.
“When Jake Mangum is healthy, he has the best hand-eye coordination out of anybody in America,” Cannizaro said. “He gets hits, it doesn’t matter if it is right-handed, left-handed, side-armers, it doesn’t matter. So when they pitch around Brent Rooker, they have to face him.”
Trey Jolly, a junior from New Albany, Mississippi, earned the decision and the win tonight. He is 3-1 on the season and threw 2.1 innings. He gave up no hits, issued zero walks, and struck out three batters. He threw 25 pitches, 15 of which were strikes.
“Trey did a tremendous job tonight of coming in, throwing strikes, throwing his breaking ball for strikes, working ahead in the count,” Cannizaro said. “Fast ball was down in the zone, he did a great job. It was great to see him pitch like that tonight. I felt that was the best he has thrown since he pitched against Kentucky about a month ago.”
MSU will face LSU in a Thursday-Friday-Saturday series for the SEC West title. The Thursday game will start at 6 p.m. and will broadcast on the SEC Network.
The Bulldogs also have a shot at a share of the SEC regular season title. They have to sweep LSU and then they would need Kentucky to beat Florida twice. This would put MSU in a three way tie with Florida and Kentucky for the SEC crown.
“I give so much credit and all the props in the world to our players for performing and doing things that nobody outside of this program thought we were going to do and thought we would be standing here playing LSU in the last weekend of the season for a piece of the SEC west title,” Cannizaro said. “I am extremely jacked up about it, our guys are fired up, we are going to have an outstanding practice tomorrow, and then we will come back out on Thursday and look to get after big bad LSU.”